Questing for the Future of Our Planet

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Monthly Archives: August 2012

Planet Stewards is looking for 20 high school teachers from around the United States to participate in the first pilot launch of Planet Stewards in the spring of 2013. This is a project of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and 3D GameLab to provide high school students the opportunity to earn up to 15 NOAA-certified career pathway badges. The student’s use 3D GameLab, a quest-based learning platform, to complete quests using NOAA educational materials. They can earn experience points, awards, achievements, and badges, as they engage in an active, hands-on, inquiry-based learning program aligned with the new K-12 Science Education Framework.

Teachers will be required to participate in a two-week asynchronous training program in the first two weeks of November in order to prepare their class for questing in the fallowing spring. Students will be able to quest all semester long, or a portion of the semester, as determined by each teacher. Participating teachers will receive a small stipend, and also receive a NOAA Certified Teacher Badge. If you are interested and would like more information, see https://planetstewards.wordpress.com/call-for-teachers/.

Don’t miss out! This is going to be a great experience for both teachers and students! Applications are due September 15th 2012.
Post by: Kodi Sims

Recently, the Planet Stewards grant team met up on conference call to review the first draft of the instructional designers’ planning. You can see it here: https://planetstewards.wordpress.com/badges-quests/. The post includes Popplets, Planning Roadmaps, ideas about all the badges, and more! Leave us a comment if you have any suggestions.

The second day was a little more complicated. There was a total of 14 people working together, five of them flying in from around the country. Everyone worked very well together, and some great concepts were formed with the pairing of ideas and knowledge.

The professionals that were present he first day were the NOAA experts, and the founders of 3D GameLab, Lisa Dawley and Chris Haskel. Each of the NOAA employees specialized in a certain subject area. The roles of each person in Planet Stewards had to do with their area specialty:

The second day the instructional design team joined the group. This is when the creativity started to fly. Each technical designer was paired up with a NOAA expert to discuss and design specific quests, along with finding enough resources to fill each quest.

Chris Haskell and Lisa Dawley momentarily goof around while discussing the operations of Planet Stewards.

All in all, each person was very open minded and invested in the creation of this game platform and NOAA badges. This is an incredible team that has come together to work on Planet Stewards. Each and everyone of the Team is knowledgeable, has ideas, and together they work successfully.